Friday, July 21, 2017

Learning Right Distinctions

“…the dispute is not about
sexuality as such. Rather, it’s about not allowing people to draw moral
distinctions that exclude others and hurt their feelings, no matter what the
justification…Tocqueville saw this coming long ago. Democracies, he wrote,
prize equality above all other values. Their ‘passion for equality,’ he
observed, is ‘ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible.’ It is not simply a
matter of assuring every person equal rights under law. Tocqueville believed,
in Patrick Deneen’s words, that democracies inevitably seek to do away
with ‘any apparent differences’ among people – ‘material, social, or personal.’
No distinctions are to be tolerated. In fact, Tocqueville wrote that democratic
societies have an inevitable tendency toward pantheism, since, in the end,
even a distinction between Creator and created becomes intolerable.”

An important strategy to
understanding the Revelation is the idea of counterfeit. It’s always been a
major point for me when teaching about the “mark of the beast” that it is just
a counterfeit to God’s mark on His people from the early parts of the Bible
onward. We focus on the beast, and, sadly, tend to ignore the wealth about what
God has done.

You’ve probably heard of a
similar counterfeit regarding the dragon, beast, and false prophet as imitative
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Mark Movsesian’s article, while
not expositing the Revelation, reveals another counterfeit of the enemy of God,
who is also the adversary to God’s people. The world system seeks to blur what
God distinguishes and counterfeit God’s establishment of unity.

Outside of Christ, God makes
distinctions. In the Old Testament, for example, it is between Israel and Egypt
(Exodus 11:7), clean and unclean (Leviticus 11:47), holy and profane (Ezekiel
22:26), “between the righteous and the
wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him” (Malachi
3:18). God pronounces “woe” on those
who redefine and change these standards (Isaiah 5:20,21).

As Movsesian astutely points
out from Tocqueville, even the vital Creator-creature distinction becomes
intolerable. We come by it naturally – our first parents fell from their first
state because of the temptation to “be
like God” (Genesis 3:5). Whether the king of Babylon’s aspirations to make
himself “like the Most High” (Isaiah
14:13,14), or the “the man of
lawlessness,” also called “the son
of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or
object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of
God, displaying himself as being God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3,4). We
tend, in our study and meditation, to identify this “man” with a single eschatological figure, but this tendency to
desire to be God is innate to every fallen human being. The rebellion against
biological gender (contra Genesis 1:27, quoted as authoritative by Jesus in Matthew
19:4), the exaltation of abortion rights (contra Genesis 1:28), and the revolt
against the creation ordinance of marriage (contra Genesis 2:24, quoted as
authoritative by Jesus in Matthew 19:5//Mark10:7,8 and by Paul in 1 Corinthians
6:16; Ephesians 5:31) – these three rejections of fundamental reality as
created by God show this spiritual psychosis.

The Church has, from the
beginning, confessed distinction – not division – in the unity of God. He is “one
God, Who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several
peculiar relative properties and personal relations” (Second London Confession,
3.2). This distinction, faithfully describing the full witness of the
Scripture, must be defended against heterodoxy in every generation of the
church.

In creation, God has ordained
distinctions. In Himself, there are three eternal and Personal distinctions.

However, in regard to the
salvation of His elect through faith in His Son, God makes no distinction. He
saves all sorts of people.

• The apostle Peter, at the first great Church
Council, proclaims, “He [God] made no distinction between us [Jews] and them [non-Jews], cleansing their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9).

• Paul teaches this in his flagship of
Christian theology: “…the righteousness
of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the
righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those
who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; Whom God displayed
publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (Romans
3:21-25).

• Later, he writes, “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord
of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for [as it
written in Joel 2:32] ‘Whoever will call
on the name of the Lord will be saved’” (10:12,13).

•
In Ephesians 2:11-22 he
describes this great division between Jew and non-Jew abolished for those in
Christ.

Paul will also simply and definitively
describe this undoing of sin’s distinctions in Christ:

• “There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither
male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians
3:28).

• “…you laid
aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the
new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image
of the One who created him - a renewal in which there is
no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and
uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is
all, and in all” (Colossians 3:9-11).[1]

Let me circle back to my
original thought, prompted by Movsesian’s article and the Tocqueville
reference.

What God has distinguished,
rebellious humanity seeks to blur. They cannot undo divinely-ordained
distinction, but they can twist and deny, even when it seems to be an
empirically-established fact. The Church is not immune from this temptation.
The New Testament speaks of those inside and those outside the Church (1
Corinthians 5:9-13; 6:9,10; Galatians 5:19-21), but I know of believers who are
uncomfortable with any exclusive language concerning either membership or any
sense of belonging.[2] The Lord Jesus, in
asserting the authority of Genesis 2:24, says of marriage, “what therefore God has joined together, let no man separate”
(Matthew 19:5,6). We all know how much of a struggle this is in the Church.

There are worldly distinctions
with divisions inherent in them which are dissolved in Christ. This is what the
world system seeks to counterfeit. Our society claims to adore seemingly
infinite diversity, but in reality this diversity is bound within an unbending
conformity. As Movsesian observes, no distinction from this conformity can be
tolerated. This is done in the name of an equality that is counterfeit to what
God has manifested in Christ.

The danger, and the reason I’ve
taken time to scribble (digitally) these thoughts down, is that believers must be
biblically-grounded in distinctions and unity. We must not take our cues from
the world on what is to be distinguished and what is to be indistinguishable.
Worldly power struggles and divisions based on race, gender, socio-economic
status, geography, personal preference, etc., cannot be allowed to assert
themselves in our worldview as individual believers, in our relationships with
each other in the Church (I’m thinking specifically about cliques here, but
that’s not the only problem), or in our authority structures in the Church. What has been made equal in Christ must not be divided by worldly standards
manifesting themselves in remaining sin in our lives.

We cannot distinguish between which people groups or types of people "deserve" the Gospel or which ones are more likely to be changed by its power - all must hear the Gospel, and all are equally dead in sin and can only be brought to life by the power of the Holy Spirit through the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone.

What God has distinguished we
cannot declare to be one. Unbelievers are not believers. Men and women are
different in some ways ordained by God in His creation. All religions are not
equal. The distinguished Persons of the one true God must not be compromised, “which
doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God, and
comfortable dependence on Him” (Second London Confession, 3.2).

We will not learn proper
distinctions and unities from the world, which is in active rebellion against
God and embodies the counterfeit to His purpose, creation, and nature. We must
get our worldview from dwelling in God’s Word and taking our cues from it
alone. "We ought to seek from Scripture a sure rule for both thinking and speaking, to which both the thoughts of our minds and the words of our mouths should be conformed" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.13.3). The tension between God’s declaration of reality and the counterfeit
will only increase. Daily we must discipline ourselves to truth, prayerfully
relying on the illumination of the Holy Spirit to help us stand.

[1] Even in the Church we have
twisted this to mean assimilation to the standards of the dominant rather than
mutual submission to Christ, the only Head of the Church. We struggle with sin
and cultural blind-spots – all of us – and still have a long way to go in our
sanctification. The good news is, of course, the assurance of Philippians 1:6.